Looking Glass
by NoFootprintsInSand
Summary: ...trapped in a diorama of a dreamscape


His eyes are often on her, and her eyes are always on him, but then again there is not much else for her to see.

There are many shades of grey here, transparent and ethereal, writhing and dancing mist. Tendrils touching her eyes, her mouth.

Swallowing all her sounds.

It is beautiful in its own right, perhaps, but she misses shapes and she misses touch. She misses colour. Other than grey there is only the view out over his room.

A bed, an armchair. A desk.

...and her, on the wall.

It is alien here, so alien, and this is her home now, this is where she lives.

She scratches feebly against the glass.

He smiles at her from the other side.

0-0-0

She does not know how long she has been trapped, time is something other where she is. She has stopped mutely screaming threatening begging, silently crying, flinging herself against the glass.

Now she measures time in his comings and goings instead.

And all is silent in here.

0-0-0

He takes to talking to her. She can hear him but he cannot hear her, and he likes that, he likes a captive, mute audience.

He is as ferociously intelligent as she had been told, this young version of the monster from her future, as magnetic and as intrinsically twisted. She listens to his finely crafted words, and she strokes her gaze across his shadowed cheeks, takes in the creeping death in his eyes, and he is beautiful still, but she knows this will all begin to turn soon. She memorised what they knew of the timeline carefully before she left, after all.

She is helpless though, here, now, she is but a spectre dancing in his glass. Others will have to pick up where she has failed.

Attempting to kill a man with catlike reflexes in a shop full of dark artefacts and cursed objects had, in retrospect, not been very wise.

0-0-0

"I will be leaving for a while. I've business on the continent. Albania, miserable place though it seems."

She knows why he is going, knows what will take place. Even though she has not tried to reach through to him for a long while she now bangs her fists on the glass, tries to mutely plead with him, _no, no please_. She will not reflect, refuses to acknowledge, that being left behind, perhaps abandoned forever trapped where she is, terrifies her more than what she _knows_ he will do abroad.

"Why so upset, my wraith? Will you miss me while I'm gone?" He seems to enjoy her reaction, yes, such fretful little mime! He walks closer, right up to her, strokes his finger languidly over the gilded frame, then across the glass towards her face, to where her tears would be if he could touch them. And she presses her palm flat against the glass in return, tries to beg with her eyes, tries to threaten with her eyes, but she knows, of course she knows, that it will amount to nothing.

Less than nothing.

He is so beautiful, yet so wretchedly evil.

He leans close, the closest to her yet. "Don't be sad. I will see you soon, little ghost," and his words fog against the glass, on top of the palm of her hand.

After he has shut the door she curls her fingers against the condensation he left, and her heart stutters, then stops, when a haphazard pattern emerge. Is this possible, is it true? It is the first tangible, _real_ thing she has felt since he trapped her here behind the glass.

She writes the letter 'T' in the remains of his breath.

0-0-0

Without him as an abominable beacon she loses touch with everything that once made sense. She stops remembering her name, and she swears her skin is an illusion, a fever dream.

There is nothing to keep all the parts of her together and whole.

Any second, any second now she will simply become one with the mist, just another tendril among the many ghosts in here.

She cannot hear herself scream.

0-0-0

When he finally returns she weeps with relief and she cares not a jot that he can see, because if his awful beautiful eyes were not seeing her, would she really exist?

He delights in her tears, comes close, puts his hand on the glass, and she, lightning fast, puts hers on top of his, from the other side.

"Tom," she says.

A tug of his eyebrows, a quirk of his lips. A pinprick of red in his eyes at the sound of her voice.

"… _interesting_ ," he says.

He can see her _and_ he can hear her and that must mean that she is real and she has to speak fast lest he removes his hand and leaves again.

"We can only hear each other if we both touch the glass," she says, too quickly.

Too desperately. Too needy.

"How convenient," he drawls, dark eyes amused and cold, but his hand remains firm on the glass.

0-0-0

She refuses to give him answers. It is a tiny crumb of power, in among all the helplessness, and she enjoys the fury in his eyes.

"Who are you?"

And she will shake her head.

"Where did you come from?"

And she will shrug.

"Why did you try to kill me?"

And she will smile and weep at the same time.

She will talk to him of other things though, her voice husky and unused, her words uncertain, her sentences disjointed. But she craves speech, both his and hers, conversation and fiery intellect. She is constantly lost on black ice with him, and she needs it after eons of numbness.

And it is tantalising, this. It's addictive, avoiding his questions and matching wits, even though the balance of power is forever tipped in his favour, even though this cannot ever be fair.

At least she has got his rage, his frustration, his threats, while she dances blithely around his demands.

Like this, she could almost feel as though she is actually alive.

Maybe she really is.

0-0-0

A few weeks hence, and he moves his ratty armchair up so that he may be more comfortable as they converse. She is curled among the whispery mist, her entire body pressed against the glass, and he angles his chair so that she is by his feet.

Of course he does.

She cannot bring herself to care.

0-0-0

One day he comes back from wherever it is he goes when he is not in his room, reading and plotting and talking to her, and he is restless. She can read him well enough by now, his little tells, the silent language of his body and face, and it is all useless information, is it not.

He flicks through his tomes, fiddles with rank objects, paces and whirls inbetween, and suddenly he turns abruptly and stalks towards her on the wall where she waits, hand already out for him.

"I wonder..." he murmurs, and touches the glass, his eyes on hers, intent, fierce, _undeniable_ , and suddenly she feels him in her head again.

The first time, back in that dark, wretched shop

 _(how long ago how long ago she does not know)_

it was fast and it was rough, he took just enough from her mind to glean why she came, and then he cursed her straight into the glass.

Now, however, he takes his time, sifts through memories, experiences, _truths_ , and she gasps in agony as he ravages her mind.

When he retreats again his pupils are blown and his smile is lazy and genuine. So is the fierce malice in his eyes.

"Hermione. A little time traveller. And my, what precious wisdom you possess."

0-0-0

His hunger for knowledge is absolute and voracious and bloodthirsty, and he picks through everything she has with glee. Not just what he needs in his quest for infinite power, all the knowledge from the future, but arithmetic, runes, elemental magic. Anything that may interest his restless mind he picks from hers.

He _appreciates_ it, he tells her.

His intellect is keen, his morals non-existent. And so she tells him what he wants, rather than suffer him inside her head. He goes often enough regardless. To look for truth. To hurt her. Because he likes it.

"What you won't tell me I will simply take."

And she knows that, so she lifts her chin and meets his eyes and gives and gives.

He delights, he gloats, he takes and takes. And the darkness in his eyes glint in appreciation when she gathers better control of herself and her words, when she pulls her intellect about herself and challenges him right back.

She is an amusing little thing, he tells her. Not boring. Not boring at all.

"And to think that I had thought to stuff you into a trunk, or hurl you into the ocean, trap you in darkness and nothing forever more. I like this much better. You are so very pretty on my wall. And valuable. Valuable most of all."

And he does so like owning rare, powerful things, does he not?

She is all of that and more.

0-0-0

He is lounging in his chair, bare feet, comfortable old trousers and a woolly jumper, one hand against the glass, a cup of tea in the other.

He has pulled a little table up now too, created a comfortable corner for himself where she is.

"I thought you had plans this evening? Your friends?"

His friends, names all familiar to her, names of violence and atrocities, their deeds for him echoing through the times. Names lit with a sick green light. Followers, she amends herself silently. He has no friends.

He agrees with her, though he does not know it.

"They are no friends of mine," he spits. "They are useful to me and for a while yet, as _you_ well know, I've need of them, excruciatingly boring and feeble-minded as most of them are. They're not like…." He stops himself with a toss of his head and a curl of his lips.

 _Not like me_ , she finishes silently for him, a thrill flashing through her for what he leaves unsaid. _Not like me._

True to his nature he wants to hurt her for his thoughts.

"Tell me. Does it pain you, all this knowledge you can do nothing with?" His gaze is genuinely curious, and his smile is out for blood. "Does it fester in your brain because there is nowhere for it to go, does it turn to gangrene in your mind? You know so much, but you are really just a reflection, aren't you, impotent, powerless. You can't stop me, you can't do anything but watch. All that it is in your head, can it be contained?"

His hand on the glass starts stroking, gentle patterns with deadly intent, and the look in his eyes is ancient, primeval, but the insanity is shiny and fresh.

"I can't even bleed you dry, can I? Are you not a bloodless wretch? I bet if I tried touching you my hand would go clean through you."

Her throat is thick, and her heart too fast. She cannot stop looking at him. His soul is threadbare in places, and she sees his madness clean through.

"But you are the most extraordinary gift I ever gave myself. Thanks to you I will undo every future mistake, right here in the past. Thanks to you, all wrongs will become rights. I will become truly invincible.

Thanks to you."

She sees his brilliance too.

0-0-0

He has pulled his entire desk right up to her now, so instead of looking out the window he looks into her when he studies and researches and hones his master plans.

"I made mistakes, in your future. Even though I won, I still made mistakes. Too many fragments of me, too many pieces. Quite absurd. But I will see to it that it doesn't happen now. Things are already changing. Facts, realities. I'm changing them. Can you not feel it?"

"No", she whispers, "I can feel nothing in here but you."

And oh the look in his eyes, so savage, so full of glee, as he slowly slides his gaze over the soft skin on her throat, her collarbones. Darkness. "That is the only thing you need ever feel."

She is starting to believe he is right.

He is her anchor to what is real.

0-0-0

Whenever he touches the glass now black inkblots replaces her grey mist. It is undulating Rorschach tests that she cannot give any meaning to no matter how hard she tries.

But she likes looking at them. They are horrifically beautiful; they sing siren songs to her mind.

Sometimes she wonders if those ink blots really come from him, or from the tears she weeps when she is certain he cannot see.

0-0-0

"I fear I must leave with some haste. I'm quite done with England for now."

She has lost track of the years, have no longer any concept of time, but she thinks she knows now when they are. She remembers, about the woman with the locket, about her unfortunate little elf.

He reads her face, and he reads it right. They know each other so well now, she thinks in elation and terror. "Yes, I killed her still. I enjoyed it, and that locket is mine by rights. But now I must leave the country for a while. Besides, there is more knowledge out there, in the world, and I want it all."

His lost years, she thinks, they are yet happening. Her presence and her displaced knowledge here have not changed things so completely that he will not drop off the face of the earth still. The panic and fear is cold around her heart. To be left behind, to be trapped here, without hope, without _him_...

She motions to him, and he humours her, moves across the room and touches his hand to the glass.

"Take me with."

The look he gives her is lazy in contrast to his wand movements, so fast they are but invisible as he packs up his precious books, his stolen treasures, his few belongings, his life.

"You need me, my memories."

He gorges on her self-disgust, licks his lips as he inclines his head.

"Yes. Yes I do. Do you wish to see other things, lost one? New vistas, the stars at night?"

At her frantic nodding he smiles, and it is cruel and it is sharp. "But I don't want you to. I don't want you to see anything but me."

He packs her and her prison into his trunk just before he leaves.

0-0-0

He travels far and wide, erratically, without any rhyme or reason that she can discern, but he is careful to always hang her on the wall of whatever hovel he alights in for the night, or week, or month.

She thinks she glimpses the nightly spectres and outlines of cities - Washington, Yale, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Alexandria - though he rarely allows her even the briefest view of a window. She knows at least that he is visiting libraries wherever they go. He returns at every hour laden with books, and even through the glass she can sense dark magic ever tightening about him.

Her presence here has made him more powerful even than before, and self-loathing curl and twines about her hair, become a crown of thorns.

He talks to her, and he reads more and more and more, but he refuses to let her see any of the books.

A calculated cruelty, she thinks.

She remembers how she loved books, once upon a time in the future.

0-0-0

He bores ever so easily, even with the world and its knowledge at his fingertips, and then he will resort to taunting her, needling her. But there is a wavering flickering need at the edges of his scorn, a need for her response, her pain, her want.

"Mirror mirror on the wall, are you real still, little ghost, are you flesh and blood?"

"Snow White." She whispers it to herself, a relic from her future childhood, and he hears her.

"Foolish fairy tales."

"This is no fairy tale," she says and lets go of the glass.

0-0-0

"You are a queer little thing. I can't entirely read your mind, even when I'm inside it."

He is in one of his thoughtful moods, unusually still, that restless, forceful energy of his temporarily restrained. She does not know where in the world they are, but the boarding house he found is one of the nicer ones, and he is leaning on his elbows towards her, dark eyes flashing and not ever at peace.

It feels like a road of moonlight traverses her soul whenever he is looking at her, even though, really, his light is that of an eclipse. She cannot explain it in words, she just knows that they are now damnably entwined, and the pain is more than anything she has ever felt.

She cannot be without the way it hurts.

'What will you do with me, Tom? You can't keep me like this forever, trapped like this, in here. You can't. You _can't_."

He smiles a little, and there is a whisper of softness caressing all the cruelty. "I might not be able to read you entirely, but I know quite enough. You are bright, and dangerous. Quite formidable, in fact, when at strength. Were you ever to escape, I would have to kill you at once."

His smile morphs into soft laughter at the look in her eyes.

"Ahh, don't fret. Didn't you know? It won't hurt if the killing is done by someone you love."

"I don't…."

"But you do. You travelled decades to kill me, and now you've got no one to love but me."

Oh he is brilliant, and beautiful, and stark raving mad, and it is such a pity really, such a waste.

 _And you, you've got no one to talk to but me_ , she thinks, but she says nothing, she lets go of the glass instead, and he looks disappointed when she fades.

0-0-0

She does mot know how long they have been travelling, but she thinks they might be in Fez, she can hear the haunting call for prayer and the most ancient library in the world is here. It is hard to tell for sure though, because he guards her so ferociously, allows her to hear and see and feel nothing outside of him.

She looks up, and starts when she sees him standing there, so near, so close to the glass, so _close_ , and there is moonlight on him, in his hair.

Night, then.

Midnight, she thinks when their eyes meet, and she can feel her soul move a little, as if it has come loose.

It reaches for his.

He feels it too, she sees it, that is the wondrous thing, the remarkable thing, how their one way connection for a couple of seconds becomes two way and she can feel him straining towards her.

And then...and then...

...he comes through. He comes through the glass, and immediately all mist becomes ink, all pitch black Roscharch tests, painting the air around her with ever-changing beauty and fear.

He smirks at her wide eyes, the desperate pulse he sees fluttering on her neck. "I didn't know if it would be possible," he admits "but I've been researching ways to come through. I wanted...I wanted to know what you feel like, if you are solid still, if you are real, how you feel when I..."

He moves towards her, and she does not back away, no, she stands there and waits for him to come.

He smiles, and that eclipse inside of him, that absence of light, it spills forth, from his eyes, his mouth, reaches for her...

...and she steps right into it as he bends down and grabs her pulse between his teeth, such insidious predator, such carnivore, and he bites down on her heartbeats and her cry is really a prayer. He laps languorously at her blood, then he steps back, just slightly, and puts a long finger under her chin, tilts her head up just so.

Eye contact. He wants to see her face as he takes her, wants free access to her mind, so she obliges, is sure to keep her eyes wide open. And she is proud of herself for managing to lock a small part of intent away somewhere he cannot go.

Though he goes everywhere else. Her old dress is in shreds in his hand, and he holds her down as he moves into and inside her body, her head.

He sweeps across her and he conquers, he ravages and plunders, eats her alive, licks her dry, drinks her blood, sucks the marrow from her bones, clenches her in his fist, and she lets him.

Because being fucked body and mind simultaneously is the most she has ever felt.

She feels him in her spine, in her throat, but most of all she feels him in her head. His triumph wraps around her, his night, his avarice

 _("mine mine mine")_

as he fucks her deep into the black ink.

He forces her body to bend and twist, wrenches exquisite pain and madness from her, surges into her again and again, takes and takes, and he allows her to take too. Allows her to lick into his mouth, allows her to pull him deeper, cant herself just so, so he touches her right there inside, yes, could anything ever hurt as good as this? Allows her to own him a little bit too. She cannot have enough of this, nothing could prepare her, oh, oh, more, just there, _please_.

Never before has she known night to burn so bright.

...she has to avert her eyes.

He laughs when he feels what she feels when she comes, when she contracts then expands, outwards, outwards, well beyond her own universe, well beyond his. She pulls him along with her, reaching reaching reaching towards the blackest of moons.

Obliteration.

They die together.

They come alive again.

And then he is languid next to her, sated, his fingers trailing her rib cage, her lips, burning dark incantations into her skin, she is almost sure of it.

How beautifully wretched this is. How mind-bending, how horrifically _right_.

And yet...

Faster than she has ever done anything before she reaches for his wand, and before he has any time to react she sends the most destructive curse she can muster towards the glass. Shatters it like he shattered her, and they see his room disappear completely on the other side.

Then, even with his hands like claws around her arms, she breaks his wand in two, and she has not been this sure of anything in her entire life, yet she heartbroken, uncontrollably sad.

Because he is too alive, too wildly dark to be contained, too brilliant to be trapped like this, caught in a cursed diorama of a dreamscape.

With her.

She looks at him, straight in the eyes, and she is calm even though his white hot rage burns her skin and her bones. His hands are about her throat, hard, unforgiving, but not stealing air, at least not yet. "I'm so sorry," she whispers, and a part of her truly means it.

"Oh, you will be", he says, and the red in his eyes are like nebulas in darkest space.


End file.
